Simone Biles competes in the floor exercise at the United States Gymnastics Olympic Trials on June 30, in Minneapolis.Charlie Riedel/The Associated Press
The Paris Olympics will feature about 10,500 athletes competing across 45 sports. Here are 10 of the best in their sport to watch out for.
LeBron James: Basketball
LeBron James.GIUSEPPE CACACE/Getty Images
This will be the fourth Olympic Games for LeBron James, who won gold with the United States at Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012 but chose not to compete in the past two Olympics. In Paris, the United States is bidding for a fifth successive gold.
Although this season was his 21st in the NBA, Mr. James remained elite, earning a 20th all-star nod and averaging a stat-packed line of 25.7 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 8.3 assists a game. Mr. James, 39, will be accompanied by a dizzying collection of big-league names, including Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and Joel Embiid.
Noah Lyles: Athletics
Noah Lyles.Patrick Smith/Getty Images
Noah Lyles, 27, who trains out of Orlando, will enter Paris as the No. 2-ranked sprinter in the 100 metres and No. 1-ranked in the 200 metres. After winning bronze in the 200 at Tokyo and opening up in a post-run interview about his mental health, the American has spent the past three years becoming the most dominant sprinter on the planet.
At the 2023 world championships last August, Mr. Lyles became the first man since Usain Bolt in 2015 to win gold in the 100, 200 and 4x100-metre relay.
He’s a six-time world champion. Fellow American Christian Coleman, who beat Mr. Lyles in March at the 2024 world indoor championships and is No. 1 in the 100-metre world ranking, will be Mr. Lyles’s biggest 100-metre threat.
Simone Biles: Gymnastics
Simone Biles.KEREM YUCEL/Getty Images
Simone Biles, 27, shocked the world at Tokyo when she withdrew from four of her six events. Before those Games, she was a global superstar and expected to dominate, especially after a four-gold performance at Rio in 2016.
However, the pressure of the Olympics, which she described in an Instagram post following a qualifying event in Tokyo as “the weight of the world on [her] shoulders,” along with experiencing a physical phenomenon called “the twisties” – in which gymnasts lose air awareness while performing twisting manoeuvres – led Ms. Biles to take herself out of the competition to prioritize her mental health and personal safety. Ms. Biles returned to training in the spring of 2023.
Then, at the 2023 world championships in her first international competition in two years – and in typical Biles fashion – she won the all-around gold, surpassing Vitaly Scherbo as the most successful gymnast in history at Olympic and world championships.
Faith Kipyegon: Athletics
Faith Kipyegon.JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
Faith Kipyegon will enter Paris after an incredible 2023 season in which she set three world records in three events in a 50-day span. The Kenyan runner eclipsed the women’s 1,500-metre, 5,000-metre and one-mile world records in separate Diamond League events before, later in the season, at the 2023 world athletic championships, becoming the first woman to win both the 1,500-metre and 5,000-metre at the same world championships.
Heading into Paris, Ms. Kipyegon, 30, is focused on winning a third consecutive Olympic gold medal in her signature event, the women’s 1,500 metres. Earlier this month, she eclipsed her own world record in the event, finishing in 3 minutes 49.04 seconds, surpassing her record of 3:49.11, which was set in Italy last year.
Ginwoo Onodera: Skateboarding
Ginwoo Onodera.Tyrone Siu/Reuters
Japanese skateboarding prodigy Ginwoo Onodera, 14, will likely be one of the youngest athletes in Paris. After his second-place finish in street at the Olympic qualifying series in Shanghai in May, Mr. Onodera sits No. 1 overall in the Olympic rankings for the event.
He will be going up against the best skaters in the world, some of whom are more than twice his age. But the hype about Mr. Onodera isn’t new. In 2022, he became Japan’s youngest champion when he was 12.
He kickstarted his 2023 season with a bronze medal in street at his first world championships against a field of 32 established professionals. Then, in May of last year, in front of a home crowd at X Games Chiba, Japan, Mr. Onodera became the youngest to win gold in men’s street.
Áron Szilágyi: Fencing
Áron Szilágyi.ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images
Competing in his fifth Olympic Games, Hungarian fencing legend Áron Szilágyi, 34, will have a chance to add to an Olympic résumé that already includes being the first male fencer in history to win three individual Olympic golds.
He won gold in the men’s sabre in London, Rio and Tokyo. Hungary – traditionally a world superpower in fencing – is third in Olympic fencing medals behind only Italy and France, a reputation that influenced Mr. Szilágyi to take up the sport when he was nine.
As a junior, Mr. Szilágyi was coached by Gyorgi Gerevich, the son of late Olympic fencing great Aladár Gerevich, who won a record 10 individual and team medals between Los Angeles in 1932 and Rome in 1960.
Teddy Riner: Judo
Teddy Riner.Vincent Thian/The Associated Press
Teddy Riner will enter Paris as one of the host nation’s brightest stars. Considered by many to be one of the greatest judokas in history, Mr. Riner holds a record 11 world titles to go along with three Olympic golds in his four Olympic appearances.
Despite his age, the 35-year-old is still a potential medal threat in Paris. He began his 2024 Olympic season by winning the Paris grand slam in February. The 6-foot-8, 330-pounder was given the nickname Teddy Bear by his peers.
Anita Wlodarczyk: Hammer Throw
Anita Wlodarczyk.Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Anita Wlodarczyk – the greatest women’s hammer thrower in history – has competed in four successive Games, winning gold in the past three. In the hammer toss, one of four throwing events, an athlete throws a metal ball attached to a grip by a steel wire. It had been a male-only Olympic event until 2000.
Since Tokyo, the 38-year-old from Poland has struggled with injuries, but she is the only woman to win three Olympic gold medals in one individual athletics event and plans to make Paris her final Games.
Olga Kharlan: Fencing
Olga Kharlan.Lee Jin-man/The Associated Press
Olga Kharlan has 14 World Cup golds, four world championship golds, has been ranked No. 1 in the world in women’s sabre for a combined five years throughout her career. What the Ukrainian does not have, however, is an Olympic gold medal in individual sabre.
She has competed in four Games between 2008 and 2021, but has never done better in an individual event than her two bronze-medal finishes in London and Rio. Ms. Kharlan made headlines in July of 2023 when she was disqualified from the world championships in Milan, Italy for refusing to shake hands with her Russian opponent, Anna Smirnova.
Instead, Ms. Kharlan extended her sabre to Smirnova to tap blades, which she later said was meant as a sign of respect while still acknowledging the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. The 33-year-old ranks sixth in women’s sabre for the 2023-24 season.
French men: Soccer
France's men's soccer team.MIGUEL MEDINA/Getty Images
One of the central focuses in Paris will be men’s soccer, especially with the host French side potentially entering the tournament as a medal favourite. Last August, French soccer royalty Thierry Henry was appointed head coach of the team.
The only time France won an Olympic gold in soccer was in Los Angeles in 1984. Since 1992, men’s soccer at the Olympics has been competed by each qualifying country’s under-23 team – a span in which France has only qualified twice.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that this will be LeBron James's third Olympics. This version has been corrected.